Participants at Lima

Within the Merlin archive, we rarely see documents relating to the French testing program. Yet one in May 1973 was released, declassified on the 24th December 2025.

The document is from F Morgan, the Procurement Executive at the Ministry of Defence, to Bill Saxby.

It details the sensitive aspects of operations from Lima and states that Mr Saxby may not wish to frighten the FCO with the document as a whole. The document references Operation 'Baby'.

The UK sampled the French tests under a cover story of 'health monitoring'. With a commitment to provide details of the activity levels and cloud contents to Peru.

As questions would be directed to embassy staff by Peruvian officials, it is best to play the 'idiot boy.'

'We must avoid being used as a pawn when our information is necessarily less extensive than the French possess.'

'The hazard aspect should, of course, not be pooh-poohed, for this might give rise to a suspicion of collusion with the French; more important it is difficult to argue technically against the proposition "if it is as safe as all that, why doesn't the French test in the N.Atlantic"'

Met flights being used to sample French tests will be difficult to conceal from officials and the public.

There must be no discussion of the significance to man of either local Peruvian or RAF observations.

The French take care to avoid fallout; we now know this is not true. Declassified documents revealed that radioactive fallout contaminated 110,000 people across the Pacific, exposing the region to radiation up to 10 times higher than initially claimed. (https://moruroa-files.org/)

Detachment officers have been warned specifically that any cleanup must be done unobtrusively and that, if challenged locally, they should say that such cleanup is for the effective working of our very sensitive instruments and detectors. It is always possible that questions could be inspired to make things awkward for us, and care has been taken in past operations to identify them and to provide answers.

Conclusion

The UK sampled the French testing program and gave the results to the Peruvian authorities. They ordered officials not to talk about the hazards, provided cover stories stating that the flights were to assess weather conditions.

They knew that the activity levels would be greater than those quoted in the UK Code of Practice for a week or two.

Then, if they are questioned about the decontamination and cleanup, say that it is essential for our sensitive instruments.

At no point in this document are the men mentioned, not the crew, the de-contamination crew or the maintenance crew. The priority is always to cover up the activity, lie about the contamination and bend the code of practice to fit the narrative. God forbid that these questions could be awkward to answer.

The ground crew who decontaminated aircraft from the French tests in the UK have been excluded from the NTV Medal, yet they have been exposed.

The question remains, how much information was given to Peru and at what cost to the UK servicemen and their families?